


Changing Faces

by supercantaloupe



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series), Fantasy High
Genre: Alternate Canon, Campaign 01 Season 02: Fantasy High Sophomore Year (Dimension 20), Canon-Typical Violence, Disfigurement, Fantasy High Sophomore Year Spoilers (Dimension 20), Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Time Skips, shitty parents, werewolf adaine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 13:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercantaloupe/pseuds/supercantaloupe
Summary: Adaine was still learning to control her new wolfish self. Adaine still hated her sister. Adaine almost ripped her sister apart with her very own claws on the roof of Ostentatia's house.Adaine is sorry for what she did. Adaine is trying to make up for it. Adaine is talking to her sister, who refuses to look her in the eye. (Just the one. The other doesn't work so well anymore.)Aelwyn will not be pretty anymore. Aelwyn will be hurt again. Aelwyn will learn to live with it, and with help from others.
Relationships: Adaine Abernant & Aelwyn Abernant, Adaine Abernant & The Bad Kids, Aelwyn Abernant & Fabian Aramais Seacaster
Comments: 7
Kudos: 41





	Changing Faces

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintelmotxt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintelmotxt/gifts).



> spoilers for sophomore year! verb tenses and line breaks indicate different scenes set at different times in the story.
> 
> this is a short fic for the wonderful ket @s-aint-elmo's werewolf adaine au which you should definitely check out because it's excellent content!!

“My _face!”_ Aelwyn howled. She laid in a crumpled heap, curled in on herself and clutching her head in her hands. Blood ran down the roof tiles like rain. “You _ruined_ my _fucking face!!”_

  
The Bad Kids exchanged worried looks as Gorgug and Fabian put their strength to good work restraining and holding back their friend, heart still beating with wild lupine rage.

  
“Do we let her kill her?” Fabian asked.

  
“Is _she_ still going to kill _us?”_ Fig asked back. She gestured to the heap of a foe at their feet. 

  
Aelwyn sobbed, hysterical and pained. The noises grew weaker by the minute. When she twitched they could just about make out the gouges carved into her cheeks behind her hands. She hardly seemed aware of anything at the moment besides herself.

  
“She can’t do anything now,” Kristen commented. She sounded nauseated. “She might already be...on her way out.” 

  
“Do we let her…?” Gorgug asked. The empty air finished his question for him.

Riz exhaled. “We can’t get information from her if she’s dead.” He looked up to Kristen and nodded. She nodded back and cautiously stepped forward, extending a glowing hand.

  
“Hey, I--” she said, gently placing it on Aelwyn’s ankle.

  
Aelwyn hissed and sharply jerked away. She snapped her head up. “Don’t you _dare_ fucking _touch me!”_ One eye glared at them clear as crystal, the other too soaked with blood to be anything but unsettling. 

  
“No, I’m trying to--” Kristen pulled back. Sirens from the distance quickly drew nearer and nearer. The Bad Kids exchanged looks again.

  
“We gotta _go,_ guys,” Fabian said.

  
“What about her?” Fig said, gesturing to the elf. She was still bleeding, just no longer bleeding out.

  
“I don’t know, make sure she doesn’t get away or something,” he answered, slightly frantic. He tugged on Adaine’s arm, now no longer mad and savage but frozen in shock and panic, staring at her sister, her sister’s blood on her claws. Fabian yanked her to get her to look away, look him in the eye. “We gotta get outta here,” he said firmly, holding her shoulders. Unable to speak, she just nodded, tight as the breath in her chest. Fabian glanced back to their companions. “Meet us back at my place when you’re done.” He grabbed Adaine’s legs and hoisted her onto his back, then quickly but nimbly moved to get off the roof. Half a moment later, they heard the roar of the Hangman peeling off into the night.

* * *

Before they put her in her own orb, she catches a glimpse. Just the briefest look, but the face Adaine catches passing that first cell in the hall is enough. It’s going to be all she can think of for a while yet.

  
She realizes how bad it really was, now. 

  
Of course Adaine remembers what happened at the house party. She hadn’t _meant_ to (very nearly) kill her sister, not really, despite how adamantly she insisted otherwise. But at the time she was still new to her werewolf instincts, her werewolf strength, her werewolf rage. And Aelwyn was a bad guy. Is. Is? Is. 

  
Even so, even remembering in too-clear detail everything that happened that night -- everything she did that night -- it’s a shock to see Aelwyn again in Calethriel. To see her face. To see the extent of the damage. To see what never properly healed, and to feel the guilt of every single mark lie like lead weights in her stomach. One look at this ugly, pitiful little creature trapped in an orb is all Adaine needs to know she has to break her out. 

* * *

When Arianwen sees her daughter for the first time in a year, she will gasp. 

  
When Aelwyn sees her mother for the first time in a year, she will spy (with her little eye; one fewer than normal) her mother’s eyes widen, even hidden behind her glassy spectacles as they always are. 

  
Aelwyn will hit her daughter with a Dispel Magic before she will do anything else. Then she will frown.

  
“You look terrible,” she will say, disapproving, displeased. “What happened to you?”

  
“Adaine happened to me,” Aelwyn will answer simply, sullen. “And Father.”

  
“Hmph,” Arianwen will respond, shaking her head slightly. She will toss a small key to her daughter and turn away. “Go to my room at the inn and clean yourself up at once. Then we will get to work.” Arianwen will walk off, leaving her daughter alone again. She will find a shop, pull a set of robes off a hanger, and wordlessly drop the requisite copper pieces on the counter before walking out. She will return to her room, and hand the robes to her daughter, along with a knife.

* * *

When the police arrived at the Wallace house, they took Aelwyn in handcuffs straight to St. Owen’s. The jail cell could (would) come after the ICU.

  
When the Abernants arrived at the Wallace house, their daughters were nowhere to be seen, and they were not happy.

  
“Where is my daughter?” Angwyn demanded.

  
“Which one?” Fig asked back. This only seemed to make him angrier. 

  
“Aelwyn got taken to the hospital,” Kristen explained. “She got pretty fucked up. I tried to heal her but she wouldn’t let me--”

  
“Enough,” Angwyn cut her off roughly. “My _other_ daughter. Where is she?”

  
Gorgug, Riz, and Kristen exchanged looks. Fig took the lead. She shrugged. 

  
“We dunno.”

  
“What do you _mean,_ you _don’t know?”_

  
“We don’t know where she is. We haven’t seen her.”

  
Angwyn looked about to yell something else when Arianwen put a hand on his shoulder. “Dear,” she said. He glanced at her and simmered down, if only slightly. She stepped forward. “Adaine rushed out of the house this evening claiming her sister was misbehaving.”

  
“She was,” Gorgug said. “She tried to kill us.” 

  
“Allegedly,” Angwyn grumbled, narrowing his eyes at the teens.

  
Arianwen ignored them and continued. She narrowed her eyes behind her glasses, very difficult to read. “Where is our daughter?” she repeated firmly. 

  
“I told you, we don’t know. She wasn’t at this party. She doesn’t do parties. Maybe she was on her way here earlier but we haven’t seen her tonight. Sorry.” Fig was admittedly distrubed, but managed to keep her cool enough to lie convincingly. Or convincingly enough. Or what she hoped was convincing.

  
Arianwen’s lips folded into a tight frown. She stood up straight, looked at her husband, and said, “Alright. Thank you,” to the teens, and walked away. Angwyn glared at them one last time before following her.

  
Late that night, an elven strike team broke into the hospital and a patient disappeared.

  
The next morning, the headlines spoke of war breaking out between Solace and Fallinel.

  
Aelwyn became another missing girl.

* * *

Elven attendants lay Aelwyn’s weak-but-intact body in the pool at Kei Lumenura and then quickly retreat. No one except Adaine seems eager to get too close. A face like that doesn’t reassure anyone. 

  
Adaine casts Detect Thoughts on her sister. Adaine walks through ruins of memories. Adaine sees firsthand the destruction wrought upon this place by their parents, the destruction wrought upon her very mind. Adaine finds the treasure at the center of the maze. Adaine opens it.

  
Aelwyn’s eyes go wide. In one of them, something flashes. She lunges forward and leaps on her sister, grabbing her throat.

  
“You _ruined_ my _fucking face!!”_ she spits. Her face is all rage, teeth bared and lips curled on one side up to a crooked, ugly smile. 

  
Adaine gasps and pushes back. Between her sister’s exhaustion and her own (now well-honed) lupine strength, she easily shoves Aelwyn off her and onto her back, pinning her down. One hand on each wrist. No material or somatic components. 

  
Aelwyn struggles weakly against her grip. She spits again, and Adaine winces. “You tried to _kill me!!”_

  
“And _you_ tried to kill _me,”_ Adaine shoots back, firmly. “That makes us even. Don’t attack me again, it’s not going to do you any good.”

  
“Let _go_ of me, you snotty little _brat,”_ Aelwyn insists, still straining. She’s weak, Adaine can feel how tired her muscles still are. She’s trembling.

  
“I’m not _still_ trying to kill you, calm down.”

  
“Let _go!”_

  
“I saw your mind, Aelwyn.” 

  
Aelwyn stops struggling. 

  
“I detected your thoughts and I saw it all and then I…” Adaine trails off, trying to find the words to describe whatever undocumented magic Aelwyn had done to save a copy of herself, and what she’d done herself to release it.

  
Adaine moves back and lets her sister sit up, turn around, look away. Aelwyn looks around, first. She sees elven attendants (and some of Adaine’s little friends) watching cautiously from the edges of the grotto, keeping their distance. She watches further off in another area the youths of Kei Lumenura going about their day. She sees the silvery light reflecting in the dew of the grass and the canopy of the tall forest surrounding this place. She knows where she is. And why.

  
Aelwyn looks down at the water. Once crystal clear, it now begins to run pink and cloudy. Old dried blood newly refreshed. But it’s still water, and still water reflects light. She looks down at herself. She gets the first good look at herself since the fight. 

  
Rough channels dig into her skin across her face, from forehead across cheek to chin. One mark drags directly across her left eye, which blinks back up at her, milky and cloudy, dull and useless. One mark catches the corner of her mouth, and rips it up into a perpetual smirk. There are more claw marks dragging across her neck and shoulder and chest (over her heart), and many crisscrossing scratches on her arms and hands. There are overlapping puncture marks on her shoulder, arranged in arcs, like something, someone tried to bite her arm clean off.

  
She stares at her reflection until the tears falling down her face hit the water’s surface, and the ripples distort the image too much for it to show anything useful at all.

* * *

Her father will join them when they reach the temple, deep in the forest. Aelwyn will still be tired, and though her clothes will only be a couple days old, they will be filthy. Angwyn will take one look at his daughter and not even bother hiding his disgust. Aelwyn will keep her head down. Maybe her hair will fall over her face and no one will have to look and see her this way again. 

  
Her mother will set down bricks of dusk moss incense in the old sanctuary and leave Angwyn and Aelwyn alone to set up the ritual while she searches for something elsewhere in the building. Aelwyn’s exhaustion will betray her, and the chalk lines she will draw on the floor will smudge and shake. 

  
Her father will not be pleased. She will knock over a candle, ruin a bit of her work, and have to start over. He will growl and his hand will light up with energy. Her cheek will sting as he shakes the magic off and orders her to “Do it properly this time.” 

  
Aelwyn will keep her head down when her mother returns to light the incense and begin the ritual, hoping to hide the redness on her face.

* * *

The rest of the Bad Kids joined Fabian and Adaine at his house two hours after they left the party. He’d brought her straight home and gotten Cathilda to help him help her through her panic attack, and they tried to relax as much as possible while they waited for their friends to return, hopefully with intel.

  
“That bitch has been working with Penelope this whole time,” Fig announced, annoyed, busting open the door and striding into Fabian’s living room.

  
“Don’t kick my door down,” Fabian whined. He had wrapped Adaine in an unbelievably soft blanket, sat them down on the couch, and put on some overdramatic reality show on the TV for them to half-watch and (attempt to) calm down, which he now muted. 

  
“Are you doing okay?” Gorgug asked Adaine, following Fig into the room. Riz and Kristen entered behind him. She shrugged and pulled the blanket close around her.

  
“I dont’t know,” she answered. “Is my sister?”

  
“They took her to the hospital,” Kristen said, coming over and sitting on the couch beside her. 

  
“Ugh,” Adaine groaned, throwing her head back. “I’m still getting used to…” She gestured to herself. “All this. It’s hard. I can’t control it yet.” She looked over to her friends, frowning nervously. “Is she…?”

  
Kristen nodded. “She’s fucked up, but stable.” 

  
“I bit her.”

  
“She didn’t contract lycanthropy. Overheard the nurses talking.”

  
“We went over to snoop around and see what we could find out,” Fig explained. Adaine sighed quietly and looked down.

  
“I didn’t mean to do that,” she said, barely above whispering. 

  
“You busted into the party and said you were going to kill her,” Fabian pointed out, raising an eyebrow.

  
“I guess I didn’t really mean it.”

* * *

Aelwyn feels her sister’s hand on her shoulder and she doesn’t move at first.

  
“Aelwyn?” Adaine says softly. That’s when Aelwyn shakes her off.

  
“What?” Aelwyn answers, turning her head only slightly. Adaine can just see that crooked smirk on the side of her face from this angle. 

  
“I’m sorry. About your face. I’m sorry for attacking you.” Adaine sounds sincere, but Aelwyn turns away again nevertheless.

  
“I don’t believe you,” Aelwyn answers moodily. She trains her eyes (eye) back down on the still-rippling water, then looks up and around at the trees again. She sighs. “But I don’t see why else you’d have bothered to break me out of that tower.”

  
“You don’t remember it, do you?”

  
A beat. “Not the details of it, no.” 

  
“In your mind I found th--”

  
“I know what you found,” Aelwyn interrupts. She doesn’t want either of them to admit it out loud, not yet. She sighs. “I know what I did.” Another pause. “The last thing I remember clearly is you _mauling_ me and yet I still don’t know exactly...why I did that.”

  
“They did take you to the hospital,” Adaine says. "We made sure."

  
Aelwyn chuckles once. “A great lot of good it did me.” She turns her head back a little and Adaine sees that smirk again.

  
“Well, _we_ tried to heal you before then, but you didn’t let us. You didn’t trust us.” A beat. “I guess that’s fair, but anyway, we didn’t let you _die.”_ Another beat. “You were going to.” 

  
Aelwyn is quiet, thinking, and still. Adaine cautiously shifts forward and attempts to wrap her arms around her sister in a hug. Aelwyn pulls away and does not let her. When their arms brush against each other, Aelwyn can feel Adaine’s soft, light coat of fur on her skin.

  
“So,” Aelwyn breaks the silence after another moment. “What are you going to do with me? Now that you’ve got me out of that blasted tower.”

  
“I think you get to decide that for yourself,” Adaine answers. She blinks, then adds, “Um, but you should tell us what our fucking parents are up to, first.”

  
Aelwyn scoffs. “For once in your life, I wish you’d realize that it’s not worth it to fight against them at every single turn.” 

  
“And for once in _your_ life, I wish you’d disobey them,” Adaine responds. Aelwyn furrows her brow and looks at her. 

  
“They’re our _parents.”_

  
“So? You don’t have to trust them or listen to them on everything. Not when they don’t care about you.”

  
“They care.”

  
“Father was more concerned with getting you locked up in Calethriel Tower than letting you get healed. He broke you out of the hospital and started a war.”

  
Aelwyn looks away, stares at nothing in particular. She thinks. She isn’t yet used to the altered depth perception of monocular vision, and is having trouble making out how far away that black cat in the distance is from her. It narrows its eyes and nods to her, indicating that it wants her to come closer. 

  
Maybe in a minute. She’s still thinking right now.

* * *

Aelwyn will steal her spellbook and escape to Arborly. Aelwyn will rejoin her parents and Kalina in the Forest of the Nightmare King. Aelwyn will save her sister from their parents again, will be almost killed again, will be rescued by the Bad Kids again. 

  
Aelwyn will finally come home, for the first time.

  
Fabian will find her in the study of Mordred Manor one day, not long after their triumphant return from spring break. “Hey, Cyclops,” he’ll say, good-naturedly, and he will lean on the doorframe. Aelwyn will be sitting at a desk reading, and he will see half her face, scarred and frowning, before she picks her head up.

  
“What do you want?” she will ask him, irritated and less-than-friendly. She will turn her head, because that eye is no good anymore, and she wants to look at him. She will remember him, from the house party, what feels like a million years ago. She will be acutely aware that she is not as beautiful as she once was.

  
“I got you something,” he will say, and lightly toss something onto the table. It will bounce lightly across the surface and land in front of her, a small package wrapped neatly in colorful paper. She will look at it, then back at him, with furrowed brow. He will nod at her with a small smile. “Go on, open it.”

  
She will purse her lips and look down again at the package, then carefully tear open the wrapper. Inside she will find a dark blue swatch of fabric decorated with shimmery runes on one side, with a long string attached. “What’s this?” 

  
She will look up in time to see him pulling a similar item out of his pocket, holding it up and shaking it slightly. “I thought we could match,” he’ll say, still good-natured. She will also notice his face, really notice it, for the first time since last year. She will notice the long, rough scar tracing the right side of this face from brow to chin, and the empty socket where an eye should have been. She will remember pressing against that cheek and kissing it a year ago, when they were both still fucked up but whole. He will lift his eyepatch up and put it on, securing it comfortably over his missing eye. His scar will be peeking out from either end, and he will be smiling. Aelwyn will look back down at the one in her hands, and, though she will not admit it (yet), she will admire it.

  
“What’s this rune for?” she will ask, tracing the silvery design with her finger. “Abjuration?”

  
“Mine is, actually,” he will say, tapping his eyepatch and raising a brow. He will turn his finger to point at hers next. “Yours is charisma.” She will blink again, and stare at him. He will tilt his head to the side a little and smile again, sincerely. “Y’know, confidence. Intimidation. Whatever.” He will shrug. “Or in case people are too dense to see you’re still super hot or something. Take your pick.” He will chuckle lightly at himself, then look down, then back at her. “I’ll, uh, I’ll leave you to it then, yeah?” He’ll bump his fist on the doorframe a couple of times as guys do before turning and heading out. “See you ‘round, Cyclops.”

  
Though he will leave the same way he came in, as he turns to go he’ll catch a glimpse of a smirk from the side of her mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> huge huge shoutout to my dear friend ket for her musings and drawings on this au that inspired me out of my writer's block to churn this out. check out her au [here](https://s-aint-elmo.tumblr.com/tagged/werewolf-adaine-au) and send some love her way, she deserves it!
> 
> a couple implications in the text i want to elaborate on: 1) werewolf adaine mauls aelwyn enough to put her in death saves at the house party fight, and kristen casts Spare the Dying to make sure she survives; and 2) angwyn busts her out of the hospital and taken immediately to be locked up in calethriel before she can be healed at all. had she been allowed to stay and receive treatment, either from hospital staff or from kristen, her scarring wouldn't be nearly as bad. 3) title is a reference to moon phases (correlating to the past, present, and future sections of the fic), and to the literal meaning of faces being changed by scars, growth, and transformations.
> 
> find me on tumblr [here](https://supercantaloupe.tumblr.com/) if you're inclined and thank you so much for reading!!


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